atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General Telecom News AT&T In the News Again

This time it is for selling inside wire maintenance plans to apartment dwellers.

Story Here.

Jim
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Speaking from a secure undisclosed location.

Sorry, but I don't see an issue here. Inside wire maintenance is a 100% optional service and tenants, or any customer for that matter, have the right to accept or decline this coverage.

If a customer doesn't do their homework before committing to this, then they made the mistake. At&t will uphold their responsibilities under their contract with the customer. If the customer has double coverage, that isn't at&t's fault.

There is also the possibility that the owners of multi-tenant buildings might not cover these expenses. It all depends upon how the lease is written. A class-action suit is a broad brush approach to a largely misunderstood industry.

Nobody held a gun to that lady's head. She has the option of canceling this insurance at any time with no penalty and she should do this (after she reviews the terms of her lease).

Since ATT didn't lose the California case, they continued with what has rightly been called deceptive practices. They operate very much like the government! Whoever thought up that billing scheme must be living large!

I can safely assume that it's not a case of "what they're doing", but rather a case of "how they do it".

Deceptive sales techniques are probably in the same book used by Bell Canada.

I've heard the way they do it when I report a trouble to Bell on behalf of my clients and I can see how the client gets caught.

The bigger issue is that clients have a tendency to just pay the bottom line on any invoice without reading what they get charged for.

Not technically illegal, but very much wrong morally. This is not something that I would implement even IF I were lucky enough to own AT&T myself.

I'm not sure of the morality, but who among us here would jump at the chance to sell every customer a "maintenance" agreement?

Never mind they played on the "old" Bell system to dupe customers into "the phone company will fix everything" service. When my father died I was amazed to see what AT&T was charging him to "rent" two black rotary dial phones. Geeze, I wish I still had them today, but that's a different thread.

Carl

The portion of the Bell System that leased phones is still in operation as an independent company:

https://www.qltcls.com/

The company was spun off from Lucent Technologies as "AT&T Consumer Lease Services" and...later...renamed "QLT Consumer Lease Services".